<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Always Watching by Calico (Calico321)</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22459882">Always Watching</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calico321/pseuds/Calico'>Calico (Calico321)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mandalorian (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drabble, Gen, I know it's more than 100 words but it's still short, Stream of Consciousness, a bit angsty, dead parents and guilt oh my</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:20:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>526</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22459882</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calico321/pseuds/Calico</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a short pointless bit of rambling with dead parent angst.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Always Watching</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They are always watching.</p>
<p>Just at the edge of his periphery they stand silently.</p>
<p>They are always with him.</p>
<p>He’s stopped trying to turn his head to get a better look. They’re never there.</p>
<p>But they watch and he often wonders what they think. Are they proud? Or disappointed?</p>
<p>They would hate what he had become. He knows he heard his father mutter, “Mando thugs,” on more than one occasion while watching the evening holovids about battles on far off planets.</p>
<p>But the Republic was collapsing around them while they did nothing, how could they judge?</p>
<p>They were pacifists. All their people were. Scholars. Poets. Philosophers. Not soldiers.</p>
<p>And that’s why they were ripe for the Separatist invasion. Weak against the onslaught of mindless, cold savagery.</p>
<p>They didn’t want him to die. They loved him. He knew that. But what was he supposed to do? Refuse to accept what had been so generously offered? Live as a beggar in the bowels of Coruscant or a petty thief on Corellia? Become some rich gangster’s sex toy?</p>
<p>The galaxy was cruel to those that did not have a place, a tribe.</p>
<p>The Republic fell and the cancer of the Empire grew up around it.</p>
<p>What was he to do?</p>
<p>His <em>buir</em> didn’t offer hollow encouragement or kiss a scraped knee better. He gave lessons in strength. And Honor. And survival. He owed the Mandalorians his life and his soul. They took him in with open arms. Took them ALL in; the children orphaned and the adults who thirsted for revenge. Stability, protection, self-reliance. He owed the <em>Mando’ade</em> everything. And they only asked for one thing in return.</p>
<p>But what would they think? Their boy that had shown such great promise as a gifted artist like his mother now using those hands for beating and shooting and killing. Uncivilized and cruel, they’d say.</p>
<p>But it had been a necessity, hadn’t it?</p>
<p>Was it all necessary to survive? Was every broken nose and cracked rib essential? Probably not. He enjoyed it, though.</p>
<p>Was every blaster shot life or death? Easier than talking in many cases.</p>
<p>Did every bounty need to experience the terror of carbonite freezing? Bail jumpers made terrible company.</p>
<p>Trading a child’s life for crate of steel?</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>He’d often look at his own reflection in the viewport against the inky blackness of space, flying from one bounty to the next. That helmet he would not – could not – remove for anyone. He’d kept to the Creed to honor those that took him in, but did he not – secretly, deep down – keep it as penance as well?</p>
<p>They sacrificed for his survival, and this was the man he’d become. Maybe it was just easier if they couldn’t see his face.</p>
<p>But now they watched as he lay in a wagon on the desolate planet of Nevarro, dozens of weapons aimed and ready to shoot if he raised his head by half a meter, his body shielding this small, precious being. Those eyes looked up at him as if to say, “I trust you.”</p>
<p>And within those eyes he finally saw them again for the first time in thirty years.</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>